Featuring all-new coverage and a convenient new two-volume looseleaf format, here's today's authoritative, up-to-date guide through the labyrinth of defamation law. Now expanded to over 1,400 pages of definitive legal, tactical, and strategic insight into libel, slander, and related causes of action, this new Third Edition reaffirms this treatise's position as 'the standard text in the field against which all others must be judged'. Citing thousands of cases, the work takes you securely through this complex field, from its common law and constitutional foundations . . . to the more recent influential case law . . . to the crucial and often confusing splits of judicial authority. Designed for judges, teachers, journalists, and lawyers on both sides of the table, the book helps practitioners and their clients to: Ensure written and oral communications are less likely to result in suit; Avoid or limit lawsuits by issuing retractions and taking other mitigating steps; Persuade judges to dismiss complaints or grant summary judgements.

This consultation paper sets out the Government's proposals for reform of the law on defamation, aiming to achieve balance between protection of freedom of speech and the protection of reputation. The Government wants to ensure that the threat of libel proceedings is not used to frustrate robust scientific and academic debate, or to impede responsible investigative journalism and the valuable work undertaken by nongovernmental organisations. Issues included in the draft Bill are as follows: a new requirement that a statement must have caused substantial harm in order for it to be defamatory; a new statutory defence of responsible publication on matters of public interest; a statutory defence of truth (replacing the current common law defence of justification); a statutory defence of honest opinion (replacing the current common law defence of fair/honest comment); provisions updating and extending the circumstances in which the defences of absolute and qualified privilege are available; introduction of a single publication rule to prevent an action being brought in relation to publication of the same material by the same publisher after a one year limitation period has passed; action to address libel tourism by ensuring a court will not accept jurisdiction unless satisfied that England and Wales is clearly the most appropriate place to bring an action against someone who is not domiciled in the UK or an EU Member State; removal of the presumption in favour of jury trial, so that the judge would have a discretion to order jury trial where it is in the interests of justice.

"The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America guarantees its citizens freedom of speech. This book is an extraordinary, true-life account of two law-abiding gadflies who unwittingly became embroiled in the Mother of All SLAPP2s and refused to be silenced by corporate corruption and judicial malfeasance. Facing financial ruin, death threats and incarceration, these stalwart Americans used the power of the Internet and the words of the World Wide Web to take on the Varian SLAPP terrorists."--Cover.